Eye to Eye
by TMBlue
Summary: COMPLETE! Moments after the final battle, Ron and Hermione find themselves alone, inside a tiny broom closet.
1. Part One

_**A/N: **Oh boy, the smutz..._

_This one goes out, as always, to my wonderful **napchic**, who inspired me to 'write the hell' out of this story by emailing me the term "rage!fuck" :D_

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><p><strong>Eye to Eye<strong>

**Part 1**

It started with a look. Not that first frantic kiss they'd shared, but something an hour before.

He'd never been able to pinpoint specifics through their years together - when he'd first fancied her, the moment in which he'd fallen in love with her... But today, some nearly blinding connection had clicked into permanent place, reducing an epicly drawn out history of misunderstandings and frustrations to fuck all.

And now, the war was over. Their shared lives had literally been pending on an event that had started to form before they'd met. An event which had unknowingly brought them together, bound them through a common, sure goal. And today, as it all came to a crashing conclusion, he was fuming. He was torn apart by too many bleeding things to name.

After Dumbledore's office, Harry had parted ways with them, and eventually, Ron dropped Hermione's hand as they turned down yet another deserted corridor. The sun was fully up, breaking through diamond-paned glass all around them, and he thought he might be sick. He froze and half doubled over, hand against rough stone, hardly able to catch a proper breath.

"Ruddy - sodding - fucks..." he hissed, and he felt her fingertips too lightly against his arm all of a sudden. He ripped away from her, slammed his fist into the wall, and groaned.

"Ron!" she whispered taking a step back. His eyes flashed to hers and he saw, immediately, that she wasn't afraid of his outburst. Not at all. In fact, her eyes were shining the same hurt and understanding back at him.

Storm still madly brewing, he took a furious swipe at the top of the hallway cabinet, grabbing hateful fistfuls of old parchment, documents once stored safely within glass cases, now smashed to bits. Distant sounds of rubble settling could be heard as he screamed out a cry, fisting his hands into his hair, bloody knuckles beginning to throb now from his collision with the wall behind him.

"FUCK!" he screamed, his voice echoing off the walls.

She gasped in little bursts as she watched him. He tremored with pain and anger and fucking _love_ as he stared across the corridor at her.

"This doesn't feel good," he panted.

She took a step closer.

"Then what would?" she asked.

And she took yet another step closer... another...

Breathing up and down at each other, he knew the answer to her question. And so, with no more words, desire churning together with rage, at so many things he couldn't undo, he grabbed her with two firm hands around her upper arms, and he pulled her close, knocking her body against his as he dipped to capture her lips insistently. She clutched at his shirt as she moaned out her surprise, and she pushed against him until he half-tumbled backwards, through the open door to an old broom closet. Separating from her lips long enough to comprehend his back slamming against the interior wall and the sounds of mops and brooms clattering to the walls on either side, he looked fiercely into her eyes again as she reached behind her back to slam the door shut behind them, dropping them into pitch darkness.

"Lumos," he heard her whisper, shakily, and her wand tip lit, her face now softly glowing as she reached high up to place her wand on top of the shelf, just above Ron's head.

She moved in to kiss him again, but he twirled them sideways, knocking against brooms again as he planted her arse and the upper half of her spine firmly against the wall, ninety degrees to the right of the door.

"Ron," she almost questioned, but she tugged his shirt again, pulling him in with a tentative leg around his calf.

He already wanted her so badly, it hurt. His erection strained against his jeans, quickly coming into contact, through layers, with her soft inner thigh. He dipped to kiss her again as she went momentarily rigid with so much alarmingly new closeness.

Sirens were raging in his ears, and he was prepared to question everything. Was it supposed to be like this? But she pulled her lips away from his to mutter a rough "don't stop unless you want to" against his stubble.

"That's a dangerous thing to tell me, Hermione," and her hot breath came in short bursts against his parted lips, her chest colliding repetitively closer to his with each inhale.

"Good," she breathed, eyes dark and locked so tightly onto his.

Her hands suddenly flew to his belt, her cheeks red hot and blotchy.

"Oh, God," he groaned, slipping his left hand up the back of her shirt and kissing her roughly as his belt was freed successfully from its buckle. She made quick work of his jeans' button and zipper, forehead creased, even as they kissed, with attempted concentration. He ground his hips between her legs, and she bit his bottom lip with shock as her right shoe fell off, hitting the floor with a thud as she slid her right leg up even higher, over his waist to wrap around him.

He adjusted his stance to support her off the ground, realizing too late that she would have to move away again to take off her jeans... and her left foot climbed up against the opposite wall, no more than two feet behind him, to balance her weight as he lifted her with both hands shooting down to her arse.

His own jeans sagged low and his erection strained through boxer cotton, up between her legs as he sucked her tongue fiercely between his teeth. She groaned deeply, and he pulled back to stare through her.

Left hand still supporting her arse, her tugged at one of her beltloops with his right index finger.

"How do we... How?" he panted, almost incomprehensibly.

"Are you a wizard..."

"Fucking hell."

He tore his wand from his back pocket, supporting her completely by pressing her deeper into the wall with his hips.

"I'm gonna rip them," he growled, way too turned on to rationalize at this point, but also somehow obligated to warn her of his impending destruction.

"G-Go on," she stammered, shivering as he swished his wand, aimed at her crotch. Her jeans slowly fell away in strips and pieces, utterly destroyed, leaving her clothed in merely a thin, torn jumper, a threadbare undershirt, and a pair of soaked knickers.

"Wow," he breathed, admiring his sudden power, under these mental conditions.

He dropped his wand, and it clattered uselessly to the floor. And he reached his hand almost tentatively down between her legs, but she arched her back and moaned her encouragement, her left foot digging more firmly into the opposite wall of this minuscule closet, her knee bent up behind his right arm.

Hooking two fingers under cotton, he slid her knickers to the side, feeling the scorching heat and wetness of her curls.

"I've wanted to fuck you for so bloody long, Hermione," he slurred, voice thick with lust.

"So, fuck me now," she whispered gravelly, against his swollen lips. "Give me my wand."

Hermione had just said…

She's just…

He swallowed through a permanent lump in his throat and his blood boiled as he followed her eyeline to the shelf just above his head, to his right. He withdrew his right hand from her knickers and reached up to retrieve her wand. Handing it to her, left hand still frozen around her arse, she dizzily performed a spell, one he distantly recognized as a contraceptive...

She handed her wand back to him, which he tossed carelessly back up onto the shelf, and he repositioned himself to hold her against the wall with his chest, her legs tightening around his hips as he reached down between them, literally ripping open his own boxers.

She shuddered against him and they both instantly tensed at the overwhelming feeling of the bare, velvet-soft skin of his cock now digging up into her curls. Swiping her knickers back again with two fingers, he boldly stared into her eyes, griping her hips firmly with his other hand.

They said so many lightning fast things, without a single word. He promised her everything. He apologized for knowing he was about to hurt her. And she forgave him, not only for the things they still hadn't spoken of, but the things he feared he'd do wrong _eventually_, those he now saw she welcomed - pain and fear and rage and all of his darkest days and brightest nights... He would never be alone. Not ever again.

Holding her knickers securely to the right, he slipped carefully but quickly up into her. She clutched desperately at his shoulders as he filled her, inch by inch. He felt her contracting muscles surround him, and he cried out something that vaguely resembled a slurred together series of swear words.

Her thighs tightened around him again as she panted out a breathy little high-pitched scream, sole of her left shoe still firmly planted on the wall behind him. She used her dangling, right, socked ankle to press against his arse, his jeans now slipping down to the backs of his thighs, boxers releasing some of their elastic hold on him as well from being ripped so violently down the front. Her ankle forced him deeper inside of her, encouraging him to push past her obvious pain.

Growling out a wave of pleasure, he tugged her jumper up, until she raised her arms and allowed him to remove it completely. Her thin undershirt clung to wool and tried to go with it, though it stopped short underneath her breasts. But it didn't matter - he was already immensely distracted by her newly revealed, perfectly smooth stomach skin. He flattened her thoroughly to the wall with his long torso, now buried completely inside of her.

It was approximately infinity times more pleasurable than he had ever imagined it would be.

"Oh - myfuckinggod," he moaned as she shivered out an exhale.

"You... can... move," she squeaked, and he took her advice, pulling himself nearly all the way out of her before sinking into her again.

As he closed all distance between them once more, he reached up and frantically grasped the wooden shelf to his right in his right hand, putting entirely too much pressure on it. He moved more quickly now, drawing himself erratically out and back into her.

"Iloveyou, iloveyou, iloveyou," he gasped, as the shelf completely gave way under his grip, collapsing chaotically to the floor, scattering random objects, casting them into thicker darkness as Hermione's lit wand rattled around near his feet.

It was bloody unfortunate that his ability to withstand much more of this level of pleasure was drastically beneath his desire to continue.

"I love you," she cried lightly back as he feared the impending end to this perfection. She pressed her forehead to his, but he quickly moved his head right, left side of his face now against the left side of hers. His nose brushed the stone wall behind her left ear and her teeth clamped down onto his _own _left ear as her foot slipped down the wall behind him, several inches.

Eyes fluttering brilliantly closed, he moved unpredictably, one last time, burrowing deeply inside of her as he convulsed, trying to catch his breath.

Each of her exhales was punctuated by a tiny throaty sound as they remained joined for several lengthy moments afterwards. At last, he lifted his head from the wall, stared into her eyes, blinked slowly, and slipped out of her, carefully balancing her until she'd lowered her feet to the floor. He buttoned his jeans around torn boxers, belt still hanging open, and he collapsed back against the wall behind him, exhausted. She was trembling all over, standing so small in the darkness, light glowing against her thin legs from her wand, somewhere on the floor between them. Her sleeveless undershirt was still caught underneath her breasts, tucked into the bottom edge of her bra. And he could just make out a small red spot at the centre of her knickers.

"How... badly did I... hurt you?" he asked gently, still trying to remember how to breathe.

"Not much at all," she reassured him, voice tiny as she shivered. "And it was perfect. All of it was... p-perfect."

"Shagging… for the... first time... against... a broom closet... wall..." he sighed. "Unexpected."

But she bit her lip and smiled delightfully up at him. He studied her for a moment before reaching tired hands out in her direction, grinning back. She slanted into him, leaning fully against the front of his body. And he wrapped both heavy arms around her, able to breathe at last.

"Ah, bollocks," he said, apologetically, after a moment. "What are you going to wear?"

She tilted her chin up against his sternum before rocking back to take her own weight on her feet again, and he watched her locate an old cloak, buried in the catastrophe he'd created by ripping the shelf off the wall. When she straightened up, cloaking herself, she was grinning broadly again. And she met his eyes through the darkness.

"You literally ripped our clothes off," she laughed. "Can't say I've never fantasized about _that_..."

His eyebrows shot up for a moment. But he grinned almost smugly back at her. Clenching his hands into fists, wincing at the pain across his right knuckles, he mentally gathered himself together and bent to retrieve both of their wands from the mess covering the small floor.

"C'mon," he mumbled, as he straightened up, slipped both of their wands into his back jeans' pocket together, and reached for her hand. "Prefect's bath?"

"Ohh, yes," she sighed, swiping her discarded, ripped jumper off the top of the piled assortment of now-broken things.

He kissed her temple, lingering for a moment to breathe her in.

"Nox," she sighed, plunging them into complete darkness.

He squeezed her hand once, and he opened the door, squinting as they were slapped across the face by the brightness of daytime sun, screaming through the corridor windows. And they walked, hand in hand, towards the fourth floor, his belt still hanging open simply because he could not actually be bothered to give a fuck.


	2. Part Two

_**A/N:** Just some smut, to pass the time (and ease the angst!). Hope you enjoy! :)_

_By the way, I haven't had time to proofread this - bad! - but I have to leave proper computer access for probably the weekend and didn't want to leave this one sitting around when it was virtually ready to go, so I apologize for any typos and please feel free to alert me to them :)  
><em>

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><p><strong>Eye to Eye<strong>

**Part 2**

They walked all the way up to the Prefects' bathroom in silence, hand in hand. He could feel her warmth radiating towards him, and he wondered if it was easier to sense now that he'd made love to her than it had ever been before. He suspected that it was, and amidst all his re-boiling anger over what they'd lost, he felt renewed strength in all that he'd gained.

They reached the door, and he tugged her sideways, through it. Passwords everywhere were broken, and he dropped her hand to move around the room ahead of her, searching for any signs of danger. It was a habit he wouldn't soon drop, he was certain, and one that felt even more than necessary.

He heard the bath faucets turning on, and he glanced over to see her unscrewing the last one.

"It's alright," she said, softly, but he felt his muscles already tensing again as he prepared himself for anything, checking the stalls before turning back fully towards her where she now stood with her back to him, on the edge of the bath, shyly stripping off her cloak.

He melted just a little as her undershirt bunched at her sides, revealing strips of creamy skin to his hungry eyes. She dropped her old jumper to the tile to join the cloak, rubbing her thighs together briefly as she turned around to face him again.

"All through the winter," she said, softly, "I dreamt constantly of this particular bath."

He smiled at her as his eyes burned, and he slowly stepped closer as he spoke, re-pocketing his wand safely next to where he'd stowed hers.

"Was I there?" he asked, voice scratchy and almost matching the correct tone of his tease, despite this sickness, slowly returning as too much time was passing between a thorough enough distraction to keep his brother's name away from his lips...

"Yes," she nodded, blushing as she played with the hem of her shirt, now resting properly at her waist.

He froze, a few feet away from her, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Really?"

She gave him a tiny nod before looking down, gripping her shirt in both hands, and pulling it up, revealing her stomach again, then her bra, as she arched her back, head disappearing inside torn fabric. She dropped her shirt to the floor, hair frazzling from static, and he watched her skin ripple with a cold shiver at being more exposed than ever before, to his eyes.

Without pause, he tore his own shirt over his head in one fluid swipe, and he stepped closer to her, until he could feel her body heat, inches away. And, very slowly, he moved both hands in from either side of her, closer to her skin as her fingertips crawled up to the top edge of his jeans. His fingers were suddenly against her waist, and he swallowed heavily before looking down, eyes burning between her breasts, along the flat stretch of her stomach as his palms curved around her sides. Her fingers walked up to spark against his own skin, low on his stomach.

This close, he could see every cut and darkening bruise, every scrape and dirty blotch against her paleness. And he looked back up to find her eyes glued to his torso, examining every inch of him as well. He rippled slightly with memories, and he closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to simply feel her hands on him, no furies to overshadow everything new.

Her palms flattened against him, dragging up his chest. He sucked in a deep breath, head falling a fraction backwards from pleasure. But he shivered again as his hands moved up her sides, towards the outer edges of her bra-covered breasts, and his fingers itched to retrieve his wand, to dive through stone and destroy anything that crossed his path.

Funny, for a few brilliant seconds, immediately after he'd shagged her, he'd felt next to nothing at all. Weightless and at absolute ease, and so naturally in love with her, like it had always been the core of his being, and he was truly himself when he could feel it most. But as soon as they'd entered this room, plausible threats had surfaced, chucking him back into the depths she'd drawn him out of minutes earlier inside a sodding broom closet.

He opened his eyes again, because he wanted to see all of her. He wanted to be in control of himself. He could take it...

But her eyes glistened knowingly back into his as he lifted a hand to run two fingers gently down her sternum, almost caressing her twin scars - one, from several years ago, following the Department of Mysteries, and this second, fresh one, from weeks ago, at Malfoy Manor.

_Weeks_. Bloody hell.

It hadn't been so very long at all, though this year had seemed like another lifetime altogether.

"You're allowed to be angry, Ron," she told him, softly.

"I wish mum hadn't finished off Bellatrix, because I want to fucking kill her myself," he said, as if instantly released of the burden of silence and control he'd taken on mere seconds early. Because she knew him too well and she was too bloody brilliant...

He almost caught the hint of a buried smile as she studied him, something like pride or love or gratitude.

"I want to go back to the night you left and tie you to your bed and steal your wand to stop you from going," she said, and his heart plummeted before she smiled fully up at him.

"I'm so, _so _sorry, Hermione," he choked.

"I know you are."

He slouched, tilting his head until his neck muscles stretched with the angle and his forehead finally reached hers.

"What else do you want?" she whispered, eyes darting between his, so close they were blurring into one.

"I... I..." he started, sensing what he was going to say without fully being conscious of it. "I want F-Fred back."

She tensed with surprise, surely at hearing Fred's name so soon. And she collided with the front of him, sliding her arms around his waist and clinging tightly, tucking her head under his chin.

"I'm s-so _furious_, Hermione," he admitted, talking into her hair as he traced her spine with one hand, burying the fingers of his other hand in her thick curls. "I don't want to be like this."

She lifted her head from his chest and tilted up to look at him again, his hand still thickly woven into her hair.

"Did it help, in the broom closet?" she asked, biting her lip.

"Yeah," he laughed. "God, yeah. It helped..."

"Me too," she said, studying him closely again. "It's like... the closer I am to you, the less I feel the pain and-and madness of everything."

"Yeah, exactly," he agreed, reveling in her ability to think things through so thoroughly and to state them so accurately, like shedding real light on something that had been too clouded and confusing for him to work his way through. How did she do that? He might never know.

"Bath's probably full," she said, blinking until he looked over her head to see the sudsy tub nearly overflowing with what looked like it could quite possibly contain heaven.

"Mmm," was all he could manage as they separated from each other. He ripped his belt from his jeans, tossing it noisily to the tile before unbuttoning his jeans and stripping them off his legs. His boxers simply fell to the floor in a frayed bundle. He stepped out of everything and, suddenly blushing and feeling the chill of the room on every single inch of him, he looked up...

...to see Hermione's naked arse descending into the tub.

Bubbles drifted higher and higher up her smooth body as she lowered herself fully into the water before turning around to face him, bubbles clustering over the tops of her breasts.

He realised, immediately, that she was getting a full view of him and he had only seen secret glimpses of her just now. Her scorching eyes were all over his naked body and he scratched the side of his face with shy embarrassment as he tried to casually follow in her footsteps, down the stairs into the steaming bath.

"Not fair," he said, dipping into the bath up to his chest before pushing off the bottom and gliding towards her. "Oh, shit, this feels good," he cut in over his own thoughts, eyelids fluttering as the heat surrounded every inch of him from nipples downward...

He noticed, then, as he moved closer to her, that every one of her exhales was punctuated by a tiny sigh of pleasure, and he managed a grin, even through his complex warring emotions, at how absolutely delightful those little sounds were to him. He'd only heard them for the first time, properly, today... beginning the moment he'd realised they were going to make love for the first time, her legs wrapping around him and-

He swallowed, now completely ready to throw her against the side of the tub.

"Come closer," she asked, voice so small and gentle. And he moved without words in her direction, until the tips of her naked breasts softly touched his own chest as he bent his knees to remain on her level.

He could hardly breathe evenly as she tensed at this new contact. He hadn't actually done things properly, he supposed, inside that broom closet. She'd never removed her bra. He'd never-

She pressed the front of her body to his and gasped almost inaudibly as he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her a few inches off the bottom of the tub, eyes on level with each other, so close...

He breathed against her parted lips as his hands smoothed up her back and she closed her eyes, tilting her head to smash her lips against his as her arms shot up around his neck, drawing her naked body up his torso as he melted, groaning heavily into their kiss. As her tongue met his, he reached down and gripped her naked arse, pushing off to drag her backwards through the water, towards the porcelain wall behind her. Soap bubbles climbed into their hair, and he brushed them through her curls as her back came into slick contact with the tile and porcelain of the side of the tub.

She pulled back from their kiss, panting and eyes wide.

"I want you so much," he growled, "but I feel like I'm dreaming."

"We're awake. We're _alive_, Ron," she said, voice oddly high pitched. "Show me."

She floated against the wall and he parted her legs with his fingers as he sank his teeth lightly into the right side of her neck. He pushed his hips forward and she wrapped her legs around him, loosely, as his hand dipped lower, swirling down through her underwater curls. And he could still feel the wetness there, even through the water, and he easily found his destination by increased heat as his callused fingertips touched her gently.

She gasped thickly and her eyes darted again as he lifted his head to look at her closely.

"Okay?" he whispered, and she could do nothing but nod almost frantically as his heart hammered erratically.

And so, with maybe too much force at first, he pushed two fingers into her, watching with awe as she arched her back and tensed her legs on either side of his hips.

"Fuckin' hell," he growled, as her muscles clenched around his fingers. He slid them slowly out of her and felt her shudder, looking directly at him and allowing him to drown in the fire whiskey coloured pools of her eyes. Pushing his fingers deeply into her again, she shivered violently and moaned out something that closely resembled his name. But then she was melting slightly down the wall, and he positioned his other hand on her hip to steady her as he slipped his fingers all the way back out of her, lifting them to the surface of the water and staring as if he could not believe what he'd just done with them.

She panted, hot breath filling the air between them as he met her eyes again. And such love and lust and fucking trust spilled from every inch of her, radiating towards him like he could be who she wanted, really and truly, and possibly forever...

Sighing out a world of frustration, he attached his teeth to her bottom lip, dragging it down as he left it again, trailing his tongue over her chin, skipping along her neck as she sucked in her stomach. Her breasts moved up to the surface of the water, pink tips just exposed over the crystal clear space around their bodies, soap bubbles keeping their distance from the excitement in a wide circle around them now, as if forced aside to make room...

Dunking his chin underwater, he attached his teeth to her right nipple, biting down gently as she squirmed against him.

"Ron..." she breathed, clenching a fist tightly in his hair as he tasted a bit of soap with hot water around her perfectly smooth skin. And then, placing both hands on her hips, he slid his lips back to the centre of her, rolling his tongue down the middle of her torso as he lowered his head into the water, eyes fluttering shut just before he submerged his head, her other hand joining the first to tangle into his shaggy hair, now underwater in front of her stomach. Eyes still closed, he made his way further down, and the floating, underwater curls he'd reached for earlier tickled his chin before his tongue slid through them, tasting the water mixed with a much more concentrated version of her taste. He felt her whole body react to him as he reached his goal, closing his open mouth around her, sucking and tasting her underneath the water.

He could hear her crying out breathless moans, even as he remained submerged, her hands tugging his hair painfully. But he had to come up for air sometime, and so, with a dramatic and sudden movement, he pushed up onto his feet again, literally sliding his own naked front against hers all the way up, until he'd made waves all around them, blinking water out of his eyes as he re-emerged and unbent his knees to tower over her, pressing his erection between her legs, _so close_...

"OH, God," she shuddered against him. "Oh, please..."

"Please, what?" he panted, dripping hair falling into his eyes, hands still securely holding her hips in place, her legs tightening around his waist as he stared down at her.

She rolled her eyes. Almost imperceptibly, but he swore he'd seen it. She knew he was baiting her, and she would have none of it. And so, with a sudden thrust of her ankles against his arse, she'd done the first part of the job for him, pushing him halfway into her as her hardened, wet nipples pressed against his naked chest.

"Fuck!" he shouted, suddenly surrounded by the most intense pleasure, almost as if he'd forgotten how good it had actually been, mere minutes ago, the first time he'd been with her like this. And then, he no longer cared that she hadn't responded. He no longer needed her words to tell him what she wanted - she was showing him. He laughed as he ducked his head towards the edge of the tub, over her shoulder, and he gripped her hips more tightly still as he pushed all the way into her, trapping her against the tub wall. "Shit,bloodyhell-" he slurred, before his curses became more theoretical than logical or understandable.

She clung to him as he drove her into the wall, her back rising against the slick tile with each move he made.

"I love you," she cried, tears actually spilling from her eyes as he slammed into her again. He nearly paused, suddenly terrified that he'd hurt her. But she met his eyes and encouraged him by tightening her legs even more so around his waist, placing both palms against his cheeks as he looked into her, touching his burning forehead to hers. "Don't stop."

And so, he didn't. He could feel her, everywhere. Her wet, glistening skin meeting his both under the water and above it. Crystal droplets rolled from the ends of his water-darkened hair, trickling down her neck from his face. And her hair was everywhere, floating in the water around them and swirling against his chest like silky soft seaweed. He kissed her, wet and sloppy and full of everything he couldn't find the words to say. Her bottom lip slid so easily between his, slick from water and salty from her tears, like swollen pillow of hot, rosy skin. His hands slipped around from her hips, gliding between the tile wall and the outward arch of her lower back, pressing her stomach more firmly into his own as he completely buried himself inside of her, overwhelmed.

He could feel mounting pleasure rising too quickly to fend off, and he let it go anyway, her arms wrapping fully around his neck to hold his lips against hers as he came inside of her, shuddering, his chest pulsing as he breathed through his nose, biting down on her soft lip as she clung to him, scraping his shoulder blades with her small fingernails...

He finally separated his lips from hers, merely an inch, and they breathed against each other through their mouths for a long moment afterwards. Unwilling to move out of her just yet, he stayed put, and she seemed reluctant for him to part with her either.

But, at last, she began to droop against the wall, completely exhausted. She opened her eyes to meet his, all blurry and melding into one at this proximity to each other.

He moved his head back far enough to see her face properly - her flushed, beautifully rose-blotchy skin, lips parted as she panted delicately, eyes roaming his face lazily as he gently pulled out of her, sliding her down from his own body until her feet rested on the floor of the tub, underwater, her breasts dropping out of his view again, beneath the surface.

She lowered her arms from around him, only to find his hands under the water, clinging to them as he clung back onto hers. Back still against the wall, she tilted her head until their eyes met again, and he sighed, more content than he had quite possibly ever been. Ever before.

He pressed his lips to hers, not in a kiss, but for a way to get as close as he could, so she could _feel _his words as much as hear them. And he closed his eyes, mumbling against her skin...

"I love you... Hermione."

She whimpered with true happiness and kissed him lightly, twice... lips so soft and feathering against his. All of his exhaustion from before, from what he should have felt after so many hours of fighting, so much pain and such an overload of emotion... it all came crashing against him, as the waves of the tub around them had before, as they'd been making love.

And when he pulled back away from her again, it was with heavily-lidded, nearly calm eyes. He shook his head, ever so slightly.

"How do you do it?" he asked her. "How do you fix everything with just one look or one touch, just by being here with me?"

"I'd say," she grinned, biting her lip shyly as he dropped her hands to glide back away from her, still staring, entranced, back at her, "that it has a lot more to do with the fact that you just finished shagging me, than it does with my presence in general. Didn't you learn about hormones and what you experience after sex? It's simple science, actually. It's-"

But his laughter cut her off and he couldn't stop grinning as she blushed.

"Come to bed with me," he asked, grinning wider still at the implications of his initially innocent sentence. "_Actually _just to sleep. Blimey, we've shagged twice and neither time was in a sodding bed."

He turned away from her and she followed with her own grin, moving quickly up behind him until her arms had circled his waist near the stairs, still submerged beneath their warm bath. His knees bent at her touch, closing his eyes to the feeling of her cheek pressed happily to his bare back. And then she'd released him and was leaving him behind to watch her climb out of their bath, water cascading off of her arse as she went. He swallowed, quelling the stir of excitement he felt at seeing her so exposed, just _there_. He wanted her, all over again. He couldn't help it.

But as she turned to look at him over her shoulder, she actually bloody winked at him, and his heart melted down into a pool of utter goo, making him surely lighter than air. He loved her. He was finally with her. And they had nothing left to fight for. All they had to do now was exist.

And it felt absolutely fucking wonderful.


End file.
